Limits to Autocracy: From Sung Neo-Confucianism to a Doctrine of Political Rights

Limits to Autocracy: From Sung Neo-Confucianism to a Doctrine of Political Rights

Synopsis

Many modern scholars of Chinese history, and many Chinese intellectuals throughout the twentieth century, have charged neo-Confucianism with laying the ideological foundations for the growth of autocracy in China. They have especially condemned neo-Confucian political thinkers of the Northern Sung dynasty (960-1127) who promoted a policy of "revering the emperor and expelling the barbarian" (tsun-wang jang-i), accusing them of having advocated a doctrine of unconditional obedience to the ruler and thereby inhibiting the rise of democracy in China. In Limits to Autocracy Alan T. Wood leads readers to a reconsideration of this prevalent view by arguing that Sung neo-Confucianists did not intend to enhance the power of the emperor but limit it. Sung political thinkers, who embedded their most important ideas in commentaries on the Confucian classic the Spring and Autumn Annals, believed passionately in the existence of a moral cosmos governed by universal laws accessible to human understanding. These laws, they believed, transcended the ruler and were not subject to his authority. By affirming the existence of a moral law higher than the ruler, this neo-Confucian doctrine could be used to set limits to his power rather than indulge it. Wood makes a striking comparison of this view with a similar doctrine of universal morality - natural law - that also provided a basis for limiting the power of the ruler and ultimately gave rise to a doctrine of human rights in Europe.

Excerpt

The main thesis of this study is that the leading neo- Confucian political thinkers of the Sung dynasty, who promoted a policy of "revering the emperor and expelling the barbarians" (tsun-wang jang-i), intended not to increase the power of the emperor, as they are often accused of doing, but instead to limit it. They believed that China's vulnerability to rebellion from within or invasion from without was due to a moral failure of China's society and could therefore be rectified only by a revival of fundamental Confucian values. Central to this revival was thought to be the institution of the emperor, who represented the indispensable link between the timeless values of cosmic harmony and the temporal reality of government policy. the priority that Sung thinkers placed on the crucial role of the emperor has caused many modern scholars to conclude that they advocated a form of blind obedience to the ruler and in so doing laid the ideological foundations for the growth of autocratic institutions in China.

During most of the twentieth century, the leading intellectuals in China have tended to blame Confucianism -- especially neo-Confucianism -- for China's failure to develop a modern democracy. in attempting to throw off the chains of Confucian authoritarianism, some of them embraced a Western ideology of Marxism-Leninism that condemned the Chinese past wholesale and promoted socialism as the agent of national salvation. Others rejected Marxism-Leninism, but were disillusioned by . . .